“My dear Mary,” said Mr Coo, “it cannot be helped. We have been intending to leave the Square gardens for some time past. It is no longer the place for us: we require more quiet and fresher air, not to speak of the risk of—” but here he stopped short.
“That’s what Michael said,” sobbed Mary. “He said it wasn’t in nature that cooies—I mean wood-pigeons—would stay in a town, and that’s why he couldn’t believe I had seen you. And now—”
“Wait a minute, my dear,” said Mrs Coo, “and let me explain. We were both hatched here, you see. There were lots of nests in these trees not so very long ago; but there have been so many human nests—houses, I mean—built here lately that the air is no longer what it used to be. The smoke of so many chimneys is too much for us; sometimes we can scarcely breathe, and really our whole time seems spent in trying to brush our feathers clean.”
“And where are you going to live, then?” asked Mary, who felt interested in her friends’ plans, though so sorry to lose them.
“We have taken a branch in one of the finest elms in Levin Forest,” said Mr Coo. “A charming situation, and where we have a good many relations.”
“Yes,” said Mary, “I daresay it is very nice for you—very nice, indeed; but think of me. You don’t know how I’d got into the way of looking out for you and watching you and listening to you; and now that I can understand what you say, it’s ever so much worse to lose you. Particularly just now, just as it really so matters to me. Michael will always think now that I’d made up a story about you, and he will never care for me again as he used to.”
“Don’t be so unhappy, dear Mary,” said both the Coos together; “most likely things won’t be so bad as you fear.”
“You say,” Mr Coo went on, “that Michael is coming back again soon?”
“Yes,” Mary replied. “Aunt told me that he has written to say he will be here to-morrow evening, but only for two nights. Then he has to go back to his ship, and I daresay he won’t be home again for—oh, I daresay not for a whole year.”
“To-morrow evening,” repeated Mr Coo; “well then, do you think you can promise to make him come up here to your window the morning after, at twelve o’clock?”